100 Days to Fix What Wall St. Broke: Don’t Evict Retirees Earl and Anne Favre

Wall Street wrecked the economy and banks are still refusing to work with people who are trying to stay in their homes. The Campaign for a Fair Settlement, along with other partners, is calling on President Obama over the next 100 days to champion an agenda that would:

The Favres are working with Occupy Chattanooga to save their home from Freddie Mac, a corporation sponsored by you and me. You can support them by signing on to their petition here.

This concerns the end of my life as I know it. I was happy and fairly financially secure. Then Katrina happened on Aug. 29, 2005. I lost everything except the clothes on my back, the sandals on my feet and my three dogs, with whom I spent six hours on a roof waiting to be rescued.

At the Cajun Dome, days later, I begged a woman to let me use her cell phone. I called my son who had evacuated to Houston, Texas, before the storm and he immediately came for me and my dogs. After six weeks at a motel in Houston, I purchased a truck and RV so that I would have a place to live when I returned to New Orleans. My son had lost his home two blocks from mine. He moved his family to Tennessee to start a new life.

In March 2006, he invited me to come to Tennessee so that he could care for me because of injuries and failing health as a result of the hurricane. I lived in my RV beside his house for a year, and then decided to build a house on the backside of my son’s 9.22 acres with cash from my retirement fund. In July 2007, my house was completed and I moved in.

Then—the economy took a nosedive in 2008 and my son began to struggle to pay his mortgage. Finally, in April 2010, my son had no choice but to vacate the property and return to Louisiana. My house, which I paid for in cash, is valued at $279,000 by State Farm.

On Feb. 7, 2013, my wife and I received a “notice of eviction” from Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac will give me $2,000 for relocation costs and take my $279,000 home if I’m out by March 24, 2013.

I’m 71 years old, an honorably discharged veteran of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, disabled and on Social Security. This seems like a huge slap in the face for all of our resources to be involved, leaving us homeless and broke.

I am only asking Freddie Mac to let me buy the acreage of my son’s land on which my house is located at a fair market value so that I can finally live out my life in this place the hurricane landed me.

Earl Antoine Favre Jr.Decatur, Tenn.

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